Starting school…

Next week Lilly will start primary school – and she cannot wait!

Having been at nursery since she was six months old, thankfully going to school holds no fear for Lilly and I know she will go in on her first day without a backward glance.

The school Lilly will go to is the same school her daddy was preparing to enter for the first time 28 years ago, although a lot has changed since then!

Before the end of term last year Lilly had an afternoon session at the school, and a home visit from her lovely new teacher, Mrs S. She was absolutely in her element, especially exploring Reception class’s outside playarea (they have scooters and everything!) and she was extremely excited to discover the model making area inside – she wasted no time getting out the glue and creating herself a super glittery butterfly!

Her classroom even has a ‘snack station’ where the kids can help themselves to as much fruit as they like, and pour themselves a drink of water or milk.

Lilly finished nursery at the end of the last school term, so she has been off for six weeks and, although it hasn’t been as bad as we thought it might have been, it has probably been a little bit boring for her while she looks forward to school and misses her nursery friends (none of whom are going to the same school). She has coped admirably, but she does ask quite often “am I starting school next week? How many weeks to go?”

We have now got all the uniform and all the stuff we need. School meals are chosen and pre-ordered online (how fancy!) We are all absolutely itching to get started with this exciting new chapter in Lilly’s life.

The only one out of all of us who does have some nagging doubts is me. I feel a little bit sad that Lilly will no longer be “ours”. We can’t just decide to keep her off school because we’re going to go on a fun day out instead. We’ll only get time with Lilly when school term time says we can. And we won’t be swanning off to Center Parcs every five minutes because it is SO BLOODY EXPENSIVE out of term time.

Also, Isla is going to be bereft without her little buddy to play with everyday. She doesn’t realise what is about to happen, but I know she will really miss her big sister. She has just started nursery two days a week, which will help (seperate blog post to come about that one…) but it will be no substitution for Lilly. Today, Isla has been poorly and fed up with a high temperature. I sent Tony out with the other two girls to make the most of the Bank Holiday Monday and Isla and I have been snuggled on the sofa while she feels a little bit sorry for herself. But when Lilly returned, Isla was transformed! Perked up straight away and was straight off the sofa wanting to play.

All in all though, I am excited too. Lilly is SO ready for school. Ready to learn, ready to make lots of new friends. I will be so proud the day I see my biggest baby in her school uniform with her book bag hopping from foot to foot because she’s so desperate to get going. And I know it will make me think back to that moment, just after she’d been born, when I looked at this teeny tiny baby that I’d wanted so desperately, and realised it had really happened, she was mine, to look after and love forever. And now that little baby is a little schoolgirl, full of so much potential.

Will I cry when I drop her off on the first day? No.

I don’t think so, anyway…

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A quick catch-up

Well, it has been a while since I last had a chance to post on here – life has been very busy in the last six weeks!

First of all, we enjoyed a lovely holiday at Center Parcs with the inlaws when Eve was three weeks old. It was the first time we have gone with other people, so we were able to do some activities ourselves with the extra help with the girls – which meant that Tony got to go Quad Biking and I tried Tree Trekking! And the girls had a few adventures including a dance class for Lilly and the tots play zone for Isla (and Lilly, who wanted to join in, despite being a little bit too big!). I also took Lilly to her first Pantomime which she seemed quite impressed by. The weather was lovely so we even managed a barbecue on one of the days!

We returned home from Center Parcs on Friday, and on Saturday, we moved house! The whole family helped us – either by minding the girls or lifting and shifting. Three van loads later and all our things were in the new house! I made sure the girls new room was one of the first things to be properly unpacked and ready, so in the afternoon when they arrived all their clothes and toys were in their room ready for them to find. Lilly had seen the house before – she came round with us when we viewed it – but Isla hadn’t been here before. We had worried that she might find the transition a bit stressful, but she has taken it all in her stride. In fact, when she walked in the front door, she said: “WOW!”, and Lilly was also impressed: “I knew it was going to be nice, but I didn’t know if was going to be THIS nice”.

And on the Monday after we moved, Tony returned to work – back to his old company on the early shifts – so he has been getting up at 4.30am everyday and getting home for around 1pm. Looking after the three girls on my own has been (how shall we put this…) challenging at times. It has been made very much easier by the fact that there is now plenty of space for the girls to play – they even have their own playroom (what should be the dining room) and in the first couple of weeks after we moved the weather was glorious, so they have been able to play happily outside in the nice big garden.

Eve is growing nicely and we have had first smiles! She is sleeping much longer stretches at night. However, she is a NIGHTMARE to get to sleep – she fights tiredness something chronic (just like her biggest sister) and ends up getting overtired very easily. The last four nights she has been up til 10pm ish screaming on and off. She still prefers to be held and will fall asleep in your arms… but if you try to put her down she will wake up and resume screaming so the whole process has to start again. Very tiring. I am hoping that this little phase won’t last too much longer!

Eve's preferred place to sleep

And of course we have just enjoyed Easter weekend – something Lilly has been looking forward to ever since her birthday at New Year! The girls have had so many Easter Egg hunts I suspect that the novelty might actually have worn off a bit! We also did our first ever baking session with Isla, making Easter nests. She seemed to enjoy it – especially licking the spoon (and just eating handfuls of the mixture generally).

So, that’s where we have been and what we have been doing. If we ever manage to get Eve into a more favourable evening routine I will be blogging her birth story… it already feels like a long time ago as so much has happened!

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Center Parcs has given us a festive feeling…

We have just returned from another really lovely break at Center Parcs.

This time, we wanted to experience the Winter Wonderland they do each year, as the first part of our build-up to Christmas.

We had booked plenty of lovely Christmassy activities for Lilly to do, including Christmas pottery painting, a Santa and Snowman hunt and a Frosty the Snowman art session which involved lots of glitter and Christmas stickers!

Lilly enjoying the 'Frosty the Snowman' art session

The weather at Whinfell Forest (Cumbria) was fabulous for the whole week – it only rained the day we left. The rest of the time it was crisp and sunny – perfect.

We were very excited to hear that there was going to be a fireworks display on the second night at 5.30pm – conveniently timed before the girls’ bedtimes, which is usually about 6.30pm. It is only this year that Lilly has recovered from her total and utter terror of fireworks - in fact on November 5th Lilly actually ventured out into the neightbourhood with daddy to admire the fireworks… even the really loud ones! But this was her first proper display.

We had such a tiring day on the Tuesday – starting with pottery painting in the morning. Lilly chose to paint a snowman, a stocking and a Father Christmas shaped ornament for the tree. Technically there should have been a lot of red and white involved… but I think Lilly considered white a little bit too boring to paint much of – so snowman ended up with a red face and Santa’s beard is a very attractive mix of purple and green! But they do look rather lovely all the same – and once again I was so impressed with how delicate and detailed she can be when she tries!

In the afternoon we’d gone swimming – which can be a bit of a military procedure with two little ones at the best of times. Everytime we have taken Isla swimming (on all our three previous visits to Center Parcs with her) she has hated it, where Lilly has always loved it. I think Isla has found it a bit of an overwhelming, noisy and hot experience. And at first when we took her in she was upset again and grizzly. So I sat with her in the baby pool and she sat on the edge with her feet in, playing happily with a bucket and a watering can for a while. Once she had acclimatised to the environment we tried taking her into the big pool – and this time, she actually seemed to quite like it! In fact, after a little while, she was giggling! It was a major breakthrough!

Lilly’s favourite thing about the pool as always was going round the ‘rapids’ and dodging the water sprays (she calls the big one Mr Sprayer and the little one Mrs Sprayer!) She also liked swimming outside – which was rather cold, I must say!

After the swimming we were all exhausted so decided to get a bite to eat in the village square instead of going home for tea and coming out again for the fireworks. It was a great plan (although an expensive one) – I was way too knackered to cook after all that exercise – and the timing was just perfect as the fireworks display started not long after we finished eating.

The display was brilliant - and all set to Christmas music. Watching Lilly’s face was the best thing for me - she was totally in awe of what she was seeing. Isla even tolerated the first few fireworks but once they started getting noisier she got upset and Tony took her back to the lodge. As Lilly and I walked home afterwards in the dark she was talking ten to the dozen about what she’d seen and what a “fantabulous” day she’d had. Such a wonderful thing.

Isla is chuffed after doing a slide all by herself for the very first time!

During the week we did plenty of walking and took in all the soft play areas Whinfell has to offer. Isla climbed up and slid down a slide all by herself for the very first time – and was pleased as punch with herself as a result! It then meant that she got a little bit overconfident and wanted to follow Lilly into the ‘big girls” area of the soft play – which meant that I once again found myself six months preggers and flying down numerous ‘tunnel slides’ and crawling through too-tight spaces to rescue a child who was stuck!

We also took part in the Santa and Snowman hunt which involved following a trail to find a series of Christmas related questions which we had to answer (some of them quite hard: name all of Santa’s reindeers being one of them… we *may* have had to google this…) At the end an elf gave Lilly a little prize for taking part and all the entries were entered into a draw… which we only won! We had a phonecall later on to tell us that Lilly had won a teddy making session and we took her up to the Time Out Clubhouse where she chose a tiger toy, was helped to stuff it and then picked an outfit to dress it in. Being totally mad on soft toys this couldn’t have been better for Lilly!

Lilly cuddles up with 'Amelia', the tiger she stuffed herself after winning the Santa and Snowman Hunt

There were, of course, some stressful moments – Isla is at that stage where she only wants to walk and refuses to go in her pushchair. The only problem being, she doesn’t neccessarily want to walk in the same direction as everyone else and is rather prone to falling! Lilly moaned a lot because we didn’t get her a bike, and is possibly the world’s slowest dawdler at the best of times. And Isla was a little bit scared of the jet planes and Chinook which were practicing their flying overhead… although I loved them, I must say. Hubby wasn’t very happy because the nearest place to park the car while unloading was a fair trek from our lodge. But all in all I would say this trip has to go down in my memory as our best trip to Center Parcs yet – and we’ve now been seven times (Elveden twice, Sherwood once, Whinfell four times)!

But of course the main event of the whole week was saved for the afternoon of our last full day – a trip to see Father Christmas. Wewere all really impressed with it… Father Christmas was very authentic and really lovely – it melted our hearts to see Lilly so happily chatting away to him while so obviously in awe! She asked him for a surprise – and he promised her he had “just the thing in mind” for her, before asking her what Isla would like – “erm, I think a baby toy” Lilly suggested. She was also very eager to tell Father Christmas that she had made a snowglobe with his picture in it at the art workshop. And Father Christmas asked the girls to leave out a carrot for Rudolph on Christmas Eve. Then he gave the girls a gift each – a cuddly horse for Isla and a cuddly cow for Lilly. This AMAZED Lilly as she had been asking for a cuddly cow a few weeks ago – and Isla goes crazy for horses. So it just goes to show: He knows, you know.

Meeting Santa's reindeers

Our other holiday highlights included:

• Isla saying “wack wacks” to all the ducks - first time she’s done this
• Isla’s giggling when she, Lilly and I all went down a ‘tunnel slide’ together
• Isla giggling as we went round the rapids and Lilly’s hysterics at being splashed by “mrs sprayer” as we went
• Lilly’s insistence that she kept seeing a badger “I saw a badger! He was climbing a tree!!” and later, “I saw another badger, on the roof of that house!”
• Discovering a ‘secret’ play area that we never knew was there before – it’s above Cafe Rouge, for anyone who wonders…

So yes, we’re still big Center Parcs fans. And no, this isn’t a sponsored post! And it is so strange to think the next time we visit, there will be three children… yikes! And that this could potentially be the last time we’ll be visiting in term time… ouch!!

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Working towards my goals

14.5.11

Back in January I wrote a post in which I set out some goals for myself for 2011. I promised that I’d review them every so often to keep on track of how i’m getting on, so here is the first of those tracker posts.

1. Teach Lilly to read - I have bought a set of Usborne Read at Home books and somebody in work has lent me another set of learn to read books. We haven’t made a proper start on this yet. However, Lilly is getting good at recognising the letters of the alphabet and she can spot her own name easily – even in the credits of programmes. Sometimes she will see a word starting with “Li” or ending in “lly”and she’ll say “that’s like my name!” So I just need to capitalise on this natural enthusiasm to learn I think. She has also started spotting squiggles that look like letters and numbers in her drawings and then tells me: “That looks like a 6, doesn’t it!?” And again I think it is time I started helping her with some basic writing too.

2. Book another holiday for us – We had a lovely holiday in Center Parcs at the end of March, and we’re going to France with the inlaws in a couple of months, which we’re really looking forward to. Finances are a bit tight so we’re not sure whether we’ll get abroad next year, but I think we’ll decide nearer the time. Mind you, there are some early plans for Tony’s sister to get married next year, possibly abroad, so if she goes ahead with that, that’s the decision made! 

5. Be superorganised to help the transition back to work – We had just about settled into our routine of Tony on morning duty and me on afternoons / nursery pick up, when his shifts changed at work and everything had to be juggled about again! Now he works early morning into early afternoon – so the half days are out of the window, and instead I work four full days, monday to thursday. Nursery had no extra days for the girls though, so at the moment me and MIL are using leave to cover the additional Tuesdays with the girls. This will probably be until August, and in a way, it’s a real blessing as I get more summer days at home with the girls this year!

7. Keep the kitchen table clear of clutter – Not been doing too well with this one. As we speak there are piles of laundry ready to be ironed and bottles of water etc living on the table. Maybe I better go and clear them off in a minute…

8. Swim a bit more -  Two weeks ago I swam twice before work. I didn’t manage it this week for one reason or another, but the intention is there and I have worked out how to fit it into my week. So now I just need to get on with it…

9. Lose weight – Probably most successful one to date… I have lost nearly 2 and a half stone since the end of January by joining Weight Watchers online. Honestly the best thing I have done in a while! I could rave about it but that’d be a whole seperate post… but I have dropped two dress sizes so far and hoping to go down one more before my holiday. Hubby joined in too, when he saw me losing weight, and he has also lost over 2 stone. Magic!

10. Use my Wii Fit more – Actually I probably use it less, as hubby is home in the evenings now so we tend to flop out and watch TV before getting an early night ahead of his 3am start! But if I keep up with the swimming, the lack of Wii-Fit won’t matter, will it?

11. Get ready to move house – This one is probably on indefinite hold! Finances just couldn’t stretch to a house move at the moment. There are some jobs we need to do around this house, but in reality I think we’ll be staying here until both girls are at school.

13. Brush up my French – French holiday coming up very soon and French still in need of a “brushing” 

14. Make the most of my afternoons off – Well, it’s day/s off now. We have had some really great days out and (most) of the time we’ve managed to do more than just errands and trips to the supermarket (although that’s exactly what we did yesterday, hehe!)

15. Spend more time with hubby (alone!)  – We haven’t done too well. No trip away for our anniversary of meeting. But we did have a really amazing night out in Liverpool in, erm, January, and treated ourselves to a stay in the Malmaison. And we have booked it again for our wedding anniversary in July. But a definite ‘could do better’ on this one…

16. Use my new camera and learn something about photography – I am using it, but I don’t know if I’m getting better. The photography book remains unread… maybe on holiday…

17. Cook lots with Lilly – Hmmm, no, need to do better… problem is, being on Weight Watchers, we’re obviously eating a lot less cake! But I wanted to get Lilly more involved in general cooking, and I still need to make more of an effort here. 

19. Go on more family days out – and blog about them. Go back to our favourite places and discover new ones. Make the most of our weekends – Yep, I think we’re doing well, no complaints!

20. Weaning Isla – She has come on well with her eating now, it was a slow start but we now have successful toast and sandwich eating, and she is better all the time with lumps. She still does the occasional terrifying gagging thing that scares me to death, but it is much less frequent now.

21. Help nurture a good relationship between my girls – Not sure how much credit I can take but I am very happy to say that, at the momement, the girls have a really lovely relationship and genuinely seem to adore each other. Everytime they’re laughing at each other, or kissing and hugging each other it makes everything worth it! 

22. Keep our family photo albums up to date – Move along now, nothing to see here…

23. Be a better blogger - Actually I’ve found it difficult to be even just as good a blogger as I was last year. There just aren’t the hours in the day / week for all the things I’d like to do. But essentially I’m writing this blog as a record for my children and us in the future. So I am trying to make sure I record all the really lovely things we do, the important milestones and funny things, the development of the girls. If I get any spare time I’ll think about all the other things I’d like to add too. Still need to remember to date my blog posts!

24. Revisit my goals regularly to see how I’m doing – Well, this is the first time i’ve done it, so not exactly monthly! But its the thought that counts…

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Back from five days among the trees

Last week we enjoyed another lovely week at Center Parcs – I think this is the fifth time we’ve been in the last three years.

For the second time we went to Whinfell Forest, in the Lake District, and were lucky to reap the benefits of the unseasonably sunny and warm first week of spring, in fact the best weather we have ever experienced at Center Parcs I think.

Make A Memory

For the first time we tried out quite a few activities – Lilly did Make A Memory (making a handprint in clay and decorating the box to keep it in), Little Kickers football, Active Tots (which, at three years old was probably a bit too babyish for her, but she still enjoyed it) and Party Hour in the Time Out Club (they play party games while the parents get an hour to themselves – in theory. That was, of course, the one hour of the holiday when Isla decided to throw a bit of an “I-don’t-want-to-sleep-in-my-pushchair wobbler). We also did the usual swimming and had a game of bowling, which Lilly loved.

Little Kickers

Other highlights included spotting frogs by the edge of the stream and Lilly helping me with the shopping by pushing one of the little trolleys (she was a little bit better at steering it this time!), and the animals we spotted from our window – all kinds of birds, red squirrels, rabbits and even a deer.

Visitor to our garden

 

Looking at frogs on the boardwalk

Sleeping wise we had much more success than last time. We learnt the lessons from staying in a two-storey house where Lilly wouldn’t sleep because it was a strange environment and because mummy and daddy were too far away (i.e. downstairs). We went for a single storey villa this visit and Lilly went off to sleep great every night and (except the first night) slept right through. (In fact, both girls even slept through my unfortunate setting off of the smoke alarm incident - a tip for other visitors: use the extractor fan while cooking…) It took Isla a little while to get used to the new place – the first night she went to sleep fine but then started waking up crying every hour. For a few days she protested loudly about napping in the cot. But it wasn’t a major issue and after a few days she was fine. As for Tony and I, we were so exhausted after all the walking and activity with the girls during the days we were asleep by 10pm most nights!

We decided not to hire bikes for ourselves this time, because it is a bit expensive and Isla is a little bit too small to go in the back of one of the carriages. But we hired one for Lilly and we were both impressed how good she was at riding it. Our main error was not hiring a helmet – our theory being that she wasn’t going to go very fast – but obviously we hadn’t accounted for the park being quite hilly in places and Lilly having not yet mastered the art of braking. Thankfully there were no accidents but in order to prevent them we had to stick close by her and hold onto the bike whenever we were going downhill – but to be fair we would’ve been doing that whether or not she’d had a helmet! But all in all the bike was a real success, she loved riding it and never complained about being too tired (which she always moans about when walking, even a short distance). In fact it even became a useful ‘exit strategy’ when trying to get Lilly to leave playgrounds etc without tears – “do you want to ride your bike now, Lilly?”

This time I really expected Isla to LOVE the swimming, because she really enjoys bathtime and splashing with her sister. But, just like last time, she remained very serious faced throughout the experience with an expression that seemed to say “Er, mum, you sure this is safe?!” I think it is the noisy atmosphere that she’s unsure of, rather than the actual pool. But there was less crying and screaming when it came to getting dressed again at the end, which made the experience less stressful than when we went in September! Mind you, they have the changing rooms so hot that by the time we were all dry and dressed Isla had gone redder faced than I have ever seen her before and we were actually a bit worried about her so dashed outside to cool her down.

Watching Lilly playing was a joy – she is such a sociable little thing and just loves other children. Whenever we went to one of the softplay areas or playgrounds she was making friends – all I could hear was her chatting away to other children and introducing herself saying: “I’m Lilly! I’m three!” She still doesn’t entertain the idea of sliding down any “tunnel slides” which she is scared of, even if one of her new found friends tried to persuade her to try it. She is brilliant at taking turns, to the point where she will happily let several children overtake her! There was one incident where a little boy was nasty to her (we didn’t see what happened) and she said she was going to “run away very fast” but apart from that it was all good. Isla had a little sit in the soft play areas too – there’s only so much she can do as she still can’t quite crawl yet, but she seemed to enjoy watching what everyone was up to.

And Tony and I remained steadfastly on the Weight Watchers – we expected we would fall right off the wagon and although we did drink wine every night we managed to resist the numerous chocolate, doughnut, cake, pizza and bread shaped temptations that were winking at us in the supermarket. We packed salads for our picnics everyday and because we were so active and too busy to sit and snack we actually both managed to lose a few pounds – result!

All in all we had a really great time with only a few tantrums from Lilly (including two in the car on the way back – making us worry a bit about our road trip to France in a few months time, but hey, that’s another story!) and we wished that we were staying a full week (although it is so blinking expensive to do that!)

With a three year old my recommendation would be to book plenty of activities for every day – one for the morning, one for the afternoon (allowing time for swimming of course) because plenty of activity and stimulation tired our little one out nicely. Take or hire a bike but beware of the hills! If you’re worried about them sleeping, go single storey. Don’t pay to reserve a villa in the central area only to realise that if you have bikes you have to go the long way round anyway to get to the village centre because the direct footpaths don’t allow bikes. Take some chalks for the blackboard in the villa if you are staying in a “new style” as it will keep the kids entertained for quite a while (and they never supply adequate chalks themselves)

But yes, we remain big fans of Center Parcs and I am already persuading Tony that we need to book another break for later in the year, when Isla will be a little older and able to join in the fun even more.

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Pools, playgrounds and playing up… our Center Parcs holiday

Last week we spent Monday to Friday at Center Parcs in Cumbria – Whinfell Forest.

We are big Center Parcs fans, and have been twice to Elveden Forest (East Anglia) and once to Sherwood Forest (Nottingham) since Lilly was 10 months old.

This was our first time at Whinfell – Elveden being our favourite so far, but also being a ridiculously long drive from where we live in the North West. Whinfell is a much more civilised 1 hour 45 minutes away, and even that felt long enough! In fact, we made our first parental error of the holiday on the journey there – waiting too long before stopping at the services meaning Lilly fell asleep in the car and napped for 40 minutes – which came back to haunt us later!

Arriving at a rainey Whinfell Forest Center Parcs

First impressions of Whinfell were very good – plenty of parking (unlike Sherwood) and we really enjoyed walking in the rain in our waterproofs through the trees to discover the  Village Centre for the first time.

The Village Centre is all undercover, unlike Elveden, and, as there was plenty of rain showers the week we were there, it was just as well. We spent our first afternoon enjoying a rather large (and expensive) beer in Bella Italia and admiring the indoor water fountain before having a wander to see the Sports Plaza and enjoy a Starbucks on our travels.

The villas are a little different at Whinfell – as they were built when the park was an Oasis – and ours was a two storey wooden house. It looked lovely from the outside – much more aesthetically pleasing than the standard issue Center Parcs bungalows – but inside it could have done with a bit of a revamp – the white goods were a good 10 years old and the decor a little bit tired. We didn’t really mind that though, but could’ve done without the super creaky staircase and no downstairs loo which meant we spent most of our evenings trying not to need a wee in case going upstairs would wake up a very light sleeping toddler….

Our first night was not to be a peaceful one, as that illegal in-car nap formed a lethal cocktail with ‘First-night-in a new bedroom syndrome and resulted in, yes, you’ve guessed it, “I’m NOT tired!!” “I don’t LIKE my new bedroom!” There’s a squirrel at my window!!” “I’m SCARED!!”. We ended up bringing Lilly downstairs with us, which wasn’t too bad as she was chatting away and making us laugh. When 10pm came around, Lilly still wouldn’t go to sleep in her own bedroom alone, so Tony had to sleep in with her before she would settle.

When she woke up the next morning, early, lack of sleep had transformed her into A MONSTER with absolutely zero tolerance for anything and with with her emotions balanced on a knife edge…

But, before we fully comprehended just how terrible a mood she was in, we took the two girls swimming first thing in the morning. It was the first time Isla has been swimming, and she remained very serious looking throughout her short experience – then promptly fell fast asleep!

Tony took charge of Lilly while I got out with snoozy baby. In a fit of unusual recklessness, he decided to take Lilly on a rather big waterslide, which she seemed to enjoy first time around, despite getting water in her face. Second time around I watched – only to see both of them go right under the water in the plunge pool. A screaming Lilly soon emerged from the water – Tony (who was frantically holding Lilly up above the water while trying to steady himself) took another five seconds – Lilly was terrified!! Not a very good second waterslide experience but quite funny for a spectator (bad mummy!)

It all started to go a little bit wrong after that. Lilly wanted to go for a wee, so I walked with her to the changing rooms. On the way there, she slipped and managed to take me down with her, so that I landed right on top of her foot! She was screaming and I was panicking because I thought I’d broken her foot. I managed to carry her to the disabled toilets where Lilly said she couldn’t stand on her foot and then, in all the upset, did a wee all over the floor, all over herself, all over me! I had visions of hospital visits and plaster casts, but luckily after a while she calmed down and was able to walk again… phew.

Soon afterwards we decided to get out and have lunch. Bad mistake at 11.30, as every other family decided to do the same, so there were no changing rooms available, and people queueing waiting for them to become free. Isla started wailing – she wanted her bottle. Lilly started whinging – “I’m hungry, I want a snack, I’m hungry, I want a snack, I’m cold, I want a snack…” on and on and on.

In the end, I took Isla into the disabled toilets to dress her while Tony and Lilly found a too-small cubicle to get dressed and I fed Isla her bottle standing up – not very comfy!

We thought the worst was over once we got out of the pool – oh, how wrong. Lilly’s mood was awful, we couldn’t go five minutes without a tantrum. We had screaming, lying on the floor, “NO! NO! NO!”, hysterical crying, refusal to walk anywhere, running off, you name it, we had it. We gamely attempted a coffee in Starbucks and some soft play near the bowling alley (they have an big open area in the bar where they play CBeebies on a big screen all day!) By about 3 O’Clock we couldn’t cope with anymore public tantrums so we all went back to the villa and prayed Lilly would go to bed ok later. Luckily, 7pm came and she went to bed fine, on her own, so we breathed a massive sigh of relief and poured a large glass of wine…

I’m happy to report that the rest of the week passed off much more harmoniously. Better sleep meant we got our good girl back, for the most part, and we had lots of fun in the playgrounds and back at the CBeebies bar (genius idea, Center Parcs!) One of the other highlights was shopping in the supermarket with the mini trolley – Lilly absolutely loved it, and looked just too cute pushing it around the aisles and loading all the items onto the checkout.

Back at the villa, we hung out three bags of peanuts on the tree outside our window and watched all kinds of birds feast on them for three days. We also had pheasants and a red suirrel come to visit – and spotted a rabbit emerging from a large rabbit hole outside once too. While we were there we had loads of fun spotting different plants and trees with Lilly on mini ‘nature walks’ – there were loads of different types of mushrooms growing everywhere. Typical though, that the main thing that Lilly remembers from these little walks was an old discarded baby dummy: “we saw a dummy, didn’t we mummy?!”

On Thursday, we had my pretend birthday (it was my 30th on the Friday, when we were travelling back), so we ate our lunch at Bella Italia (delicious) and had a takeaway for our evening meal.

We also learnt, while out and about during the week, that Lilly can do a wee in the bushes if neccessary!

All in all, we had a great time, bar an extremely stressful second day. Sleep is absolutely the MOST important factor in determining Lilly’s behaviour, and Lilly’s behaviour is the one and only key to whether or not we have a wonderful day, or the day from hell!

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We’re not made of cardboard…

I’ve been really disappointed with this summer, because when I visualised life with a new baby and Lilly too I thought of spending days in the park and in the garden, playing in the paddling pool and getting loads of fresh air.

It hasn’t really worked out like that, has it?

Ok, it’s not been the worst summer but it hasn’t really been the best. And, as a family we can be pretty indecisive about where we’re going to go and what we’re going to do with our days, so when you add uncertainty about what the weather is going to do, we often end up not doing much at all!

The weather did not put us off trying out our new double buggy!

 

But last weekend we decided to laugh in the face of the rainy weather forecast and go for a walk around the Albert Dock in Liverpool with the girls – one of our favourite places to go. Often if it is raining we take shelter in the Maritime Museum, but this time we decided we wanted some fresh air, rain or shine.

When we first arrived, the weather looked ok. But the wind was blowing quite ferociously, especially as we were down by the river. We had decided to try out our new double buggy (purchased with our future holiday to Center Parcs in mind). It started off really well, with Lilly keen to get in the buggy to sit next to Isla… and to sit under the “tent” (raincover) which we decided to use to keep the wind off Isla’s face.

Soon though, Lilly was bored of being captive in her buggy, and wanted to walk. As we started to walk along the waterfront, the rain began. It was coming down in short showers, but when it rained, it rained, and we got drenched!! But we had the whole stretch to ourselves, even on a Saturday in August and it was great fun just running along in the wind and rain with Lilly absolutely loving the experience!

The lifeboat was out as the Mersey was so choppy

 

The wind was also making the Mersey really choppy and at certain points along the way the water was even splashing up over the path – cue loads of squeals of delight from Lilly as we jumped to avoid them!

We walked all the way to the ferry terminal where Lilly spent some time kissing and hugging the Beatles penguins (!) and managed to use the big toilet (twice).

The double buggy had to be called into action again when Lilly got a little tired and threw an impressive tantrum – poor Isla’s face as a screaming toddler was strapped into the seat next to her against her will was a picture!

All in all we had such a lovely family day and I hope it has taught us that we really aren’t made of cardboard. Next time we fancy a day out, perhaps we should ignore the weatherman, take our waterproofs and just see what happens!

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It’s been a busy week…

It’s been all go this week with appointments here and there for both girlies.

On Monday, Isla had to visit the hospital to have her hips checked. This was a routine appointment for any babies who were breech late into the pregnancy – she was only breach up to 36 weeks and then turned, but I was still referred. We were literally in and out of the hospital in less than 5 minutes, consultant checked her over, said all was fine. She barely woke up!

Tuesday’s appointment was a bit more traumatic – Isla’s first jabs. I was dreading it! In reality it wasn’t too bad, the poor thing did cry, which was awful, but she got over it fairly quickly with a compensatory bottle in the waiting room afterwards and was fine for the rest of the day – if anything she just slept lots.

Yesterday (Thursday) was Lilly’s 2 and a half year check-up with the Health Visitor. Our old HV has retired, so we met our new one for the first time. She seems fine, and mentioned that she once had three children under three, so at least she has had children of her own so might talk some sense (occasionally!). Again, all was fine, she just asked me whether Lilly could count, recognise colours, name body parts, walk up and down stairs, that kind of thing. Yes, yes yes, was the answer. Lilly also demonstrated her more “willful” side by having a lie on the floor tantrum at the prospect of being measured against the height chart. Cue me climbing on there myself giving a demonstration (fail), attempt at distraction technique (fail), promise of trip to the park (fail) followed by threat of confiscating crayons (success!!) I was starting to sweat a bit at this live demonstration of my parenting skills while HV sat and “observed”. Was SO glad when Lilly piped up with a butter-wouldn’t-melt “Sorry mummy, I won’t do it again” and took herself over to the height chart good as gold (aaaand relax…). After all that palaver I noticed this morning that HV didn’t even write the height into Lilly’s red book – seem to recall it was about 99cm but I wasn’t taking that much notice!

Aside from all our appointments, yesterday morning I took Lilly swimming.  It has been a long time since she went (probably our last holiday to Center Parcs, which was November, I think) and it was just so strange to be swimming with a little girl and not a baby! Wearing her new waterwings, Lilly was able to float in the water just holding onto my hands, instead of needing to be held in a cuddle or around her waist. It has made me think about how I begin teaching her to swim. I managed to encourage her to kick her legs but not sure where we go from there? Anyway, she really loved the pool experience and said she wanted to stay “for ever and ever”! It took a chocolate button bribe (the ultimate bribe which is only used in the most desperate of situations) to get her out!

I was also very proud of her because half way through the swim she said: “I need a wee wee. We get out and go to the toilet, and then we get back in”. So that is exactly what we did, and Lilly went on the “big” toilet without needing her seat adapter or anything. What a good girl!

I had also been thinking about taking Isla swimming. I was too scared to take Lilly on my own when she was a baby because I worried about all the logistics. But lately I had been thinking “what was I worried about, it can’t be that hard”. But having a quick glance around yesterday I realised why I had been reluctant. What do you do with the baby while you are getting dressed? How can you carry a baby and operate a locker, let alone put all your stuff in or out. There are only two “family” cubicles, the others are the size of a kitchen cupboard. If somebody’s using the family ones, where do you go? And, how do you get in and out of a pool on your own while carrying a baby? I continue to have a lot of respect for those mums and dads who do complete this amazing feat on their own week in week out – think I am still not quite brave enough and Isla’s first swim will have to wait for a few weeks until we are at Center Parcs again.

And, on the sleep front, Lilly has been a little better the last two nights. She has only had one or two small wakeups, although she has started getting up at about 5am, which isn’t too great. And, two nights out of the last three Isla has been asleep for the night by 8pm, which has given us a couple of more relaxing evenings to ourselves. Great!

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9 weeks 2 days – still feeling sick

Well, this pregnancy I am definitely not managing to avoid the morning sickness – it is there constantly, pretty much.

I suppose I’m still pretty lucky as so far it has not got anywhere near actually being sick, but it’s like having constant car sickness or something in the background all the time. Occasionally it gets a bit worse – like this evening, where I really felt awful for half an hour or so – and sometimes it’s not too bad and I forget about it. But it’s always there.

We have just come back from a lovely week at Center Parcs in Sherwood Forest, which i’ll probably blog about seperately. I’m still very much off the tea and coffee – in fact the thought of pretty much any hot drink, including hot chocolate or horlicks makes me feel quite ill. I’m back to a stage where I just can’t get too excited about the thought of any food – I have  a ‘big shop’ to do but can’t think of any meal ideas which seem remotely appetising. I ate some mini cheddars at Tony’s mum’s house this afternoon and they just tasted like salt! I’m also really thirsty all the time, but no matter how much I drink it doesn’t go away.

My hormones are all over the place too. Last Sunday, while we were getting ready to go to Center Parcs the following day, I went to the supermarket to buy some of the things we were going to take away with us for self catering. My timing was awful. I was in the supermarket for the 11am Remembrance Sunday two minute silence. (Usually we go to to a service, the only reason we didn’t this year was trying to get everything packed and ready for our holiday). Anyway, they announced over the tannoy that they were going to be doing the silences in ten minutes, and then proceeded to start playing really emotional songs like Mariah Carey “There’s a hero/if you look inside your soul….” Oh my god. By the time the fanfare came on for the silence I already knew. I was going to be a hormonal wreck. I tried to find a quiet aisle (settled on the nappy aisle and tried to fix my gaze on them for the two minutes) and just stood there with the tears rolling down my face. It was just awful. I didn’t have a tissue or anything on me. After the two minutes were up, I tried really hard to pull myself together again but couldn’t really think straight so just threw a few more things in the trolley, paid, and got out of there!

As soon as I got in the car, I called Tony and started sobbing… he must’ve wondered what the hell had happened!

I had a similar hormonal outburst about this stage in pregnancy last time – again in the supermarket! I was doing the shopping and Tony was washing my car. When I finished I got into the car park and couldn’t find Tony. I tried to ring him and couldn’t get an answer. I got really upset and panicky. I wheeled the trolley round the car park a few times, like a mad woman, all bleary eyed. I thought Tony had abandoned me and I was really cross and upset. What had actually happened was there was a queue to wash the cars, and he was still washing mine, with the phone inside it. Eventually I spotted him at the car wash, wheeled the trolley over and pretty much pushed the trolley into the car, shouting “where have you been?!?! I thought you’d gone without me!!!”

At that point in the last pregnancy, I vowed never to step in a supermarket ever again. Internet shopping all the way.

I think the same course of action would be wise this time round, too!

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Seven weeks four days – feeling bleuurrrghhhh!

The queasiness and inability to face the thought of many foods has really got a lot worse over the last few days. This is worse than I remember it with Lilly – although I suppose last time I didn’t have a lively little toddler to look after and I got more sleep and could take things slower I suppose!

Yesterday it reached a peak. Luckily, it was a Sunday and Tony was here because I was just feeling shattered and so queasy. Everytime I ate, it made me feel worse. Eventually, when Lilly went to bed at 6pm (she hadn’t had her usual nap, because the noise of the wind outside scared her, so she went to bed a little earlier) I went to bed too, and slept for a couple of hours. Bliss. I felt much better when I woke up, but still a bit icky.

For the last few days I’ve also felt ill at the thought of tea and coffee – something which never happened last time. I know it must be so obvious in work when I’m turning down teas and coffees – usually I’m a caffeine monster – but I don’t really care if people work out what the reason might be – the thought of a cup of coffee makes me feel really sick!

Today I’m feeling a bit better though, so I’m hoping i’ve turned a corner. I even had a sip of tea this afternoon, without ill effect! I’ve got a constant nausea underneath everything, but at lunchtime I managed to go out and find a sandwich that I actually liked the look of and fancied to eat, and managed to eat it without feeling queasy or bloated. So that was a small victory!

I think the morning sickness has actually helped make things seem a bit more real. I probably do believe I’m pregnant now (finally!!) so it has had some useful effect.

We might not have the early scan now (i’m a ditherer, i know…) as we are on holiday in Center Parcs next week and then i’ll be nearly nine weeks by the time we’re back, so not all that long to wait until the 12 week scan which is on December 2. So we’re trying to be a bit patient and resist temptation!

Oh, and my personal prediction about this baby – a boy! Based on a strong hunch I had on the day of ovulation and still have today. Only time will tell!

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